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(b Constantinople, 1881; d Chamonix, July 27, 1954). Armenian cellist. He studied with Grützmacher and while a student played chamber music with Brahms and Joachim. At the age of 17 he appeared as the soloist in Strauss's Don Quixote with the composer conducting and scored a triumph; he was then invited to play concertos with Nikisch and Mahler. In 1901 he settled in Paris, where Casals saw some of his fingerings and recognized that Alexanian shared his own, then revolutionary, ideas on technique and interpretation. Many years' collaboration followed, leading to the publication in 1922 of their joint treatise Traité théorique et pratique du violoncelle and in 1929 of Alexanian's analytical edition of the solo cello suites of Bach. Alexanian was professor of the Casals class at the Ecole Normale de Musique from 1921 to 1937, when he left for the USA. His classes in Paris, Baltimore and New York attracted artists and students from all over the world, and his influence extended far beyond his own pupils (among them Maurice Eisenberg and Antonio Janigro) to such cellists as Feuermann, Cassadó, Piatigorsky and Fournier. He was also a conductor of distinction....

[Ricketts, Frederic Joseph]

(b London, Feb 21, 1881; d Reigate, May 15, 1945). English composer and bandmaster. As a cornet-player with the Royal Irish Regiment, he served in India. Subsequently he studied at Kneller Hall (1904–8), qualifying as a bandmaster, and in 1908 was appointed to the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. In 1912, under the pseudonym Alford (his mother's name), he published the marches The Vedette and Holyrood, the first of a long series of marches. Two of the most famous, written during World War I, illustrate differing approaches to march-style. Colonel Bogey (1913) is in simple time; the golfing allusion of the title reflects the work's origin on the green, where Alford's partner would whistle the notes C and A instead of shouting ‘fore’. On the Quarter Deck (1917) is in the compound time made popular by the American John Philip Sousa. Alford is unlikely to have missed Sousa's concert on ...

Cambodian music ensemble. Named for the female celestial figures that adorn Angkor Wat, this music and dance ensemble has featured performances of Cambodian music for audiences in the United States since 1986. Dr. Sam-Ang Sam—a master musician who studied with court and village master musicians in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh and who was named a 1994 MacArthur Fellow—established the ensemble with his wife, Chan Moly Sam, a master dancer trained to portray both male (neay rong) and female (neang) dance roles. The artists met in Cambodia and studied at the University of Fine Arts before the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Later, he studied with José Maceda at the University of the Philippines. The couple immigrated to the United States in 1977. They formed the ensemble while he completed his doctoral dissertation on the pinn peat (court music ensemble) at Wesleyan University. Afterward, the ensemble moved to Washington, DC and partnered with the Cambodian-American Heritage Troupe directed by Sam-Oeun Tes, a master dancer who studied with the Cambodian Royal Ballet before moving the United States in ...

American hip-hop group. It was formed in 1995 in Los Angeles by will.i.am (William James Adams, Jr.; b Inglewood, CA, 15 March 1975; rapping, vocals, various instruments), apl.de.ap (Allan Pineda Lindo, Jr.; b Angeles City, Philippines, 28 November 1975; rapping, drums), and Taboo (Jaime Luis Gómez; b Los Angeles, CA, 14 July 1975; rapping, keyboard). The group grew out of Atban Klann (1991–5), a Los Angeles-based group signed for a time to Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records. The Black Eyed Peas developed an approach that fused elements of global pop, jazz-rock, funk, soul, noise music, and a variety of hip-hop styles. Initially considered somewhat of an underground phenomenon, the Black Eyed Peas achieved worldwide commercial success after being joined by Fergie (Stacy Ann Ferguson; b Hacienda Heights, CA, 27 March 1975; rapping, vocals) in 2003. The group’s third and fourth albums, Elephunk (2003) and Monkey Business (2005...

Japanese electronic instrument manufacturer. Casio was founded in Tokyo about 1956 by Toshio Kashio as the Casio Computer Co., to make smaller electronic machines; it has been specially successful with its pocket calculators, digital watches and cash registers. Its first musical keyboard was marketed in 1980. Casio pioneered electronic keyboards designed for children. It has manufacturered organ-like home keyboards (since ...

[Cathay Music Society]

Sponsored by the Chinese Six Companies Association, it was formed in 1911 by 13 Chinese teenagers in San Francisco and was the first Chinese Western-style marching band in America. Later its members created the Cathay Club, or Cathay Music Society, which fostered multiple bands and social activities, including a small Chinese instrument ensemble. Bookings ranged from the Orpheum Circuit, which involved tours to the Midwest and South under such names as the Chinese Military Band and the Chinese Jazz Band, to various world fairs, including the Panama Pacific International Exposition (1915). The Cathay Club also provided music at holiday parades and funeral processions for generations of San Franciscans, a tradition absent in other American Chinatowns. It grew to 30 members in the 1930s and around 100 at its peak, when it included a senior band, a junior band, a glee club, and two dance bands. The Cathayans Orchestra and Chinatown Knights, formed by Cathay Club members in the 1920s and 30s, were the first all-Chinese dance bands in the United States, performing big band music through the 1950s. In ...

(Korean: ‘great Woo’)

South Korean manufacturer of acoustic and digital pianos. Founded in 1967 as Daewoo Industrial, the large conglomerate Daewoo International Corp. is named for its founder, Kim Woo-jung. In 1977 the Daewoo Precision Industries division purchased the Sojin musical instrument factory of Yeoju, Korea. Sojin had been making guitars; it added upright pianos in 1976. Between 1980 and 1991, Daewoo exported Sojin pianos as well as pianos under the names Royale, Daytron, Daewoo, Schafer & Sons, Sherman Clay (until 1987), and Cline, in addition to private labels. These pianos were of inconsistent and relatively low quality. Starting in 1989, Daewoo began to manufacture digital pianos. In 1990 they produced 13,452 uprights, 2,364 grands, and 2,120 digital pianos.

In 1991, Daewoo purchased a 33% share of the German piano maker Ibach, selling the Sojin equipment to a Chinese firm and replacing it with copies of Ibach’s machinery. Thereafter, instead of Sojin pianos, Daewoo produced Ibach brand instruments to a higher standard, using components such as Renner actions and Delignit wrestplanks. However, the parent Daewoo International Corp., stressed by the Asian financial crisis, went bankrupt in ...

Japanese record label of Nippon Columbia Kabushiki Kaisha. The firm's forerunner, Nippon Chikuonki Shōkai (Japan Phonograph Company), was established in 1910 by the American entrepreneur Frederick Whitney Horne. The company immediately undertook a recording programme, becoming one of the first Japanese companies to do so, and produced records by the soprano Miura Tamaki among others. In 1927 it became affiliated to the British Columbia Company, and it changed its name to Nippon Columbia Chikuonki Kabushiki Kaisha the following year. In addition to marketing a large number of Columbia recordings, the company won popularity with recordings by the tenor Yoshie Fujiwara.

Foreign management of the company came to an end in 1935, after which it was administered with Japanese capital, and in 1946 its trading name was changed to Nippon Columbia Kabushiki Kaisha. From 1948 the company distributed recordings from American Columbia (the relationship with American CBS continued until 1968, and that with the British Columbia Company until ...

Line of MIDI-based reproducing player pianos introduced by Yamaha Corporation in 1982 (1986 in North America). The Disklavier system combines an acoustic piano with an electromechanical player-piano system. As in other such systems, fibre-optic sensors register the movement of keys, hammers, and pedals during performance, while the digital controller operates a bank of solenoids installed under the piano’s key bed; one solenoid is positioned under the tail of each key, with additional solenoids connected to the pedal rods. Performance information is stored digitally on CD-ROM, floppy discs (still used for many accompaniments for instructional piano material), or a hard drive. Disklavier systems can be connected to sequencers, tone modules, and computers via MIDI and Ethernet. A built-in speaker system attached to the case under the soundboard is used to play back optional digital piano sound and especially for playback of accompanying orchestral or vocal tracks.

Unlike other electronic player systems, the Disklavier is only installed in new Yamaha pianos and only at the factory. It cannot be installed in older Yamahas or other brands of pianos. Compared with other systems, the Disklavier’s recording capability is generally regarded to be of the highest quality and sophistication. Of the Disklavier models available in ...

Chinese piano manufacturer. An outgrowth of the government-owned Shanghai Piano Factory, founded in the 1920s, the Dongbei Piano Factory was established in 1952 in Yingkou City in Liaoning province of northeastern China (dongbei means ‘northeast’) to take advantage of the high quality of local wood. For many years, the firm made only upright pianos. In 1988, after the Swedish firm Nordiska went out of business, Dongbei purchased the designs and equipment for the Nordiska Model 116, an upright superior to Dongbei’s. Dongbei formed an agreement in 1991 with the Korean firm Daewoo whereby Daewoo helped Dongbei produce uprights. This arrangement was extended in 1996 to include grand piano production and ended with Dongbei buying most of Daewoo’s equipment and designs after the latter ceased piano manufacture in 1997; some of Daewoo’s designers and technicians then went to work for Dongbei. In 1994 Dongbei began to export their Sagenhaft uprights to the USA....

Israeli piano duo. It was formed in 1952 by Bracha Eden (b Jerusalem, 15 July 1928) and Alexander Tamir (b Vilnius, 2 April 1931). They both studied at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (Tamir with Schroeder, Eden with Schroeder and Tal), graduating in 1952; in 1955 they continued studies with Vronsky and Babin at the Aspen Music Festival. They made their début in Israel in 1954, then appeared in New York (1955) and Rome (1956), where they won the 1957 Vercelli Competition; in 1957 they also appeared in London and Paris. They are directors of the Fannie and Max Targ Music Centre, Jerusalem, and senior professors at the Rubin Academy. During the 1990s they began to perform and teach regularly in China, Russia and Poland, and in 1997 they became directors of the International Duo Piano Seminary, established as a joint project of the Warsaw Academy of Music and the Rubin Academy. The duo have had considerable influence on the development of the repertory and have made an important contribution to the revival of neglected works for two pianos and piano duet, including works by Czerny, Clementi, Dussek and Hummel, and the original two-piano version of Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor. Their many recordings include the complete music for two pianos and piano duet of Mozart, Schubert and Rachmaninoff, and works by Bach, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Bartók, Poulenc and Lutosławski. Besides many works from the standard repertories they play much contemporary music: in ...

Record producers of Turkish birth. The brothers Nesuhi (b Istanbul, Turkey, 26 Nov 1917; d New York, NY, 15 July 1989) and Ahmet Ertegun (b Istanbul, 31 July 1923; d New York, 14 Dec 2006) became top executives at Atlantic Records. At an early age Nesuhi developed a love of jazz, which his brother soon shared. They moved to the United States in 1935 after their father, a diplomat, was appointed Turkey’s first ambassador to the country. In 1941 Nesuhi began to promote jazz concerts in Washington, DC. Soon afterwards he moved to California, where he founded Crescent Records and purchased Jazz Man Records, on which he reissued recordings of New Orleans jazz. Ahmet attended St. John’s College, graduating in 1944. Shortly thereafter, he convinced his friend Herb Abramson to help him start a record label, and in 1947 Atlantic Records was born. By 1949 the label had released a few hits by Professor Longhair and later the Clovers and Ray Charles, among others. Nesuhi was brought into the Atlantic fold in ...

Balinese dance and music group founded in 1979 in the San Francisco Bay Area by Michael Tenzer, Rachel Cooper, and I Wayan Suweca. It has since grown into an internationally recognized ensemble that has toured throughout North America and Bali. Under the leadership of its permanent directors and visiting artists from Bali, its members have studied using traditional methods, foregoing written notation, learning instead through imitation and by rote. The group has performed a variety of Balinese dance and music genres, including gender wayang, gong kebyar, bamboo jegog, and angklung. Its repertoire has included traditional works as well as kreasi baru (“new creations”) by Balinese and American artists, commissioned with the support of public and private funding initiatives. The group’s long-standing ties to artistic circles in both the United States and Bali have positioned it as a strongly cross-cultural organization, mutually influencing both American and Balinese musicians and dancers. In addition to performances, the ensemble has hosted educational workshops to share and promote Balinese arts and culture. In ...

Jazz fusion group. Founded in 1974 by the multi-instrumentalist Dan Kuramoto and the koto player June Okida Kuramoto, Hiroshima took its name from one of two Japanese cities to suffer atomic attack during World War II. It consists of third-generation Japanese Americans and first rose to popularity in the late 1970s amid the Asian American movement, which also provided the impetus for the development of Asian American jazz. Hiroshima’s early sound mixed Japanese instrumentation, notably koto and bamboo flutes, with a blend of electric jazz, funk, and disco soul. In addition to playing a variety of saxophones, flutes, and keyboards, Dan Kuramoto has served as the group’s main arranger and songwriter.

Although Hiroshima’s membership and style have shifted over the years, its most consistent feature has been June Kuramoto’s virtuosic koto playing. At the age of six, she began lessons with the koto sensei Kazue Kudo. Eventually mastering the instrument’s traditional repertoire, she also developed her own approach to improvising....

(Jap.: Hoshino Musical Instruments)

Japanese manufacturer of musical instruments. Matsujiro Hoshino founded the company in 1908 as a book and sheet music store (Hoshino Shoten) that from 1929, as Hoshino Gakki Ten, also sold guitars by Salvador Ibáñez imported from Spain. Under direction of Hoshino’s son Yoshitaro Hoshino, the company began manufacturing Ibanez-brand guitars in 1935, after Ibáñez’s workshop had been destroyed in the Spanish Civil War and the brand sold to Hoshino. In turn, the Japanese factory was destroyed in 1945, and in 1955 the Hoshino company moved to Nagoya. From that time most of their products were exported, including, from 1957, a line of newly-designed Ibanez guitars. Under Yoshitaro’s son, Junpei Hoshino, the company opened the Tama Seisakusho factory in 1962 to produce amplifiers and electric and acoustic guitars, including copies of classic American guitars that eventually led to lawsuits. Star-brand drums were added to the Tama product line in 1965, and from ...

Rock band. Formed at Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey, the Hsu-nami is an erhu progressive rock band fronted by Taiwanese American erhu player and composer Jack Hsu. Hsu was classically trained in violin. His erhu training included intensive summer lessons in Nanjing, China. The rest of the group is composed of Tony Aichele (guitar), Brent Bergholm (guitar), Dana Goldberg (keyboard), John Manna (drums), and Derril Sellers (bass). The Hsu-nami integrates an amplified “erhu,” a two-string spike fiddle used in Chinese classical and folk music, into an instrumental progressive rock sound. Their music is marked by virtuosic erhu melodies and shredding solos, in place of vocals, intertwined with heavy guitar riffs, funky rhythms, and metal-driven rock drumming. Part of the new-fusion rock movement, the group recasts the sound of its 1960s and 1970s roots.

The band has played alongside international and major recording artists such as Chthonic, Yellowcard, Bowling for Soup, Nightmare of You, and The Parlor Mob. Their music was also featured during the ...

A musical ensemble from Tuva, in southern Siberia, which emerged in the 1990s as the pre-eminent international representative of Tuva's musical culture. The name (Tuvan xün xürtü) means literally ‘sun propeller’ and refers to the vertical separation of light rays that in Tuva often occurs just after sunrise or just before sunset. For the members of Huun-Huur-Tu the refraction of light that produces these rays seems analogous to the ‘refraction’ of sound that produces articulated harmonics in Tuvan overtone singing.

Original members of Huun-Huur-Tu (founded in 1992) included Kaigal-ool Khovalyg (b 1960), Albert Kuvezin (b 1965), Sayan Bapa (b 1962) and Aleksandr Bapa (b 1958). Later, Kuvezin and Aleksandr Bapa formed their own ensembles and were replaced by Anatoli Kuular (b 1967) and Alexei Saryglar (b 1966). Huun-Huur-Tu's song arrangements and performance style were shaped by its members' experience in ensembles organized under the aegis of the Soviet Ministry of Culture to perform Tuvan ‘national’ music in pop-inspired forms. Huun-Huur-Tu, however, differs in important ways from its Soviet predecessors. Eschewing the standard Soviet template for ‘national’ music ensembles of electric guitars, bass and drum kit combined with amplified traditional instruments and pop-style vocals, Huun-Huur-Tu emerged as a folk music group much like revivalist folk groups in the West. While all of the members of Huun-Huur-Tu have direct experience of Tuva's pastoral way of life, they learnt most of their repertory from recordings, song collections and fieldwork expeditions rather than through oral transmission from family or neighbours. Huun-Huur-Tu's hallmark musical style is characterized by a seamless mixture of overtone-singing (...

An annual festival of music, dance and theatre, founded in 1961 by Aharon Z. Propes, director of the Ministry of Tourism, with the intent of making the young state, already renowned for its high musical standards, into an international artistic centre catering to local audiences and attracting summer tourists. The first festival hosted Pablo Casals, the Budapest Quartet and Rudolf Serkin, thus establishing the predilection for Western classical music. In 1962 the festival commissioned Stravinsky's Abraham and Isaac, introduced by the Israel PO under Robert Craft, with Stravinsky himself attending and conducting his Symphony of Psalms. At that time festivals were held in July and August, with performances all over the country, including in the Roman theatre at Caesaria, refurbished for outdoor spectacles such as Samson et Dalila. Israeli premières included that of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron. In 1982 the Ministry of Tourism handed the organization of the festival to a publicly controlled society, Hagigat Israel (Israel Festival), which has frequently cooperated with private entepreneurs. Since then the festival has been situated in Jerusalem and held over a period of three weeks in May–June, with some events repeated in other locations. Most performances are given in the four-auditorium complex of the Jerusalem Theatre; other venues include the Ein Karem Music Centre, Dormition Abbey and the Scottish Church (St Andrew's), and there are also firework displays over the walls of the old city and other free outdoor events. The festival has had no clear artistic policy. Nearly every year a large-scale opera production, such as the Arena di Verona's ...

Israeli ensemble. It was founded in 1972 by the pianist Alexander Volkov, the violinist Menahem Breuer and the cellist Zvi Harell, who was later replaced by Marcel Bergman. Breuer is the leader of the Israel PO and Bergman is its principal cellist; they and Volkov are also active as soloists. The trio's recordings of the complete piano trios of Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Schumann have been highly praised. The repertory of the group also embraces 20th-century works, some by Israeli composers including Oedoen Partos, Yardena Alotin, Yehezkiel Braun and Ebel Erlich, who dedicated his Piano Trio to the ensemble. The trio performs regularly in international festivals, including Edinburgh and Schleswig-Holstein, and has given many recitals for the BBC. Its members give masterclasses at the RAM, London, the Musikhochschule in Munich and elsewhere....